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<blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8356639" data-attributes="member: 7023840">It's an internet thing. Having watched the (unfortunate) evolution, it sort of worked like this:As I am sure you know, there are these things called &quot;informal fallacies.&quot; A long time ago, back in the usenet days of the internet, people who vaguely remembered the informal fallacies from their Philosophy 101 class began to trot them out, often incorrectly, in order to WIN ALL THE POINTZZ!!11!!!! on the internet. From usenet, it spread to the nascent world wide web and then, in general.So now we have the situation where the invocation of these informal fallacies is a meme unto itself. Where you get people dropping ad hominem, or strawman, or begging the question at a drop of a hat. And this is really annoying, because:1. 85% of the time, the person who is doing it is doing it incorrectly.2. Even if they are using it correctly, it doesn't matter. It's almost like the whole lesson of ethos, pathos, logos has been lost- sorry, never learnedThere are numerous classic examples of this- if you have ever been in a courtroom, or watched a courtroom drama, you know that informal fallacies of relevance (such as ad hominem) are completely proper arguments. For example, if someone is shown to be a liar, then you can discount what they are saying.This is because the heuristics that we use for discussion and decision are not the same as a structured and logical argument.TLDR; the surest mark of a person that just wants to argue without knowing what they are talking about is the employment of informal fallacies. Because then they can just get to arguing without discussing the underlying substance. Finally, America and the UK are two great countries separated by a common language. You should check out the different in &quot;moot&quot; sometime.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Snarf Zagyg, post: 8356639, member: 7023840"] It's an internet thing. Having watched the (unfortunate) evolution, it sort of worked like this: As I am sure you know, there are these things called "informal fallacies." A long time ago, back in the usenet days of the internet, people who vaguely remembered the informal fallacies from their Philosophy 101 class began to trot them out, often incorrectly, in order to WIN ALL THE POINTZZ!!11!!!! on the internet. From usenet, it spread to the nascent world wide web and then, in general. So now we have the situation where the invocation of these informal fallacies is a meme unto itself. Where you get people dropping ad hominem, or strawman, or begging the question at a drop of a hat. And this is really annoying, because: 1. 85% of the time, the person who is doing it is doing it incorrectly. 2. Even if they are using it correctly, it doesn't matter. It's almost like the whole lesson of [I]ethos, pathos, logos[/I] has been lost- sorry, never learned There are numerous classic examples of this- if you have ever been in a courtroom, or watched a courtroom drama, you know that informal fallacies of relevance (such as ad hominem) are completely proper arguments. For example, if someone is shown to be a liar, then you can discount what they are saying. This is because the heuristics that we use for discussion and decision are not the same as a structured and logical argument. TLDR; the surest mark of a person that just wants to argue without knowing what they are talking about is the employment of informal fallacies. Because then they can just get to arguing without discussing the underlying substance. Finally, America and the UK are two great countries separated by a common language. You should check out the different in "moot" sometime. [/QUOTE]

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